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[Dugan]

this looks cool! makes me think of a very old game on the amiga/pc called Robinsons Requiem, where you explore a planet with dinosaurs on it (Yours looks way better though, and RR was actually pretty unplayable and crappy in hindsight, just the open world + dinosaurs concept I liked).

I agree with the previous comment that the current base grass pops out a bit, its not super bad, but just sits oddly with all the other handdrawn looking textures (the grass `looks` derived from photograph source).

But I appreciate this is work in progress, so that base texture may work fine once everything is put into the levels - but if you were to look into tweaking it, check out Dawn of Mana on PS2 -
http://images.psxextreme.com/screenshots/ps2_dawn_mana/ps2_dawn_mana_02.jpg

it goes down the route of 'less is more` sort of style - so its more blotchy/painterly.

[peous]

Here are the first 2 key NPCs you meet:

Nice ! Will these NPC be (at least partially) generated using the character builder you've shown before ?

[zede05]

it goes down the route of 'less is more` sort of style - so its more blotchy/painterly.

Yep, changes are being made, not quiet as radical as Dawn of Mana though, I'll be able to post it later this week...hopefully. We're going to tone down the amount of 3D grass as well, it's taking too much ms. 

Nice ! Will these NPC be (at least partially) generated using the character builder you've shown before ?

Nah, the key NPCs will be modeled, I want a distinct look to the main set of characters so that people can remember them, the rest of the NPCs though will be completely generated. At least that's the plan.

[leonelc29]

god it's awesome!

[zede05]

This week we've been working on getting the efficiency of the ai up to snuff, we're going to try to put in LOD shortly for the animation and models, that should help get the rendering ms down a bit (right now it's taking 6-10ms to render on a gt550). The voxel multi-material is almost-there-but-not-quiet-there-yet. We've changed the grass texture to something more hand painted, the pic below isn't in game, but we tried it a bit and it looks decent. It still needs some tweaking so it doesn't look so repeat-ish. We also made a few more outfits/armor for the female character.







Next step would be modeling some NPC characters as well as getting the NPC ai/mission system started.

[Josich]

Looks huge project. I can´t imagine how you will mix all gameplay element together, but sound very interesting.

One of my eyes over this project.   

[zede05]

So this week, we've got the voxel multimaterials working, as well as shadows on the multimaterials (this isn't as easy as it may sound). We've got the server almost setup, so we could try to do coop soon. Getting a simple mission structure up as well.

Worked on some NPCs on the art side. As well as lots and lots of forest plants. I really like the forest biome designs, I'll post some screens once we have them in a more showable fashion.

Also worked on the world map...WorldMachine is a powerful software, but it's really hard to do minute details as well as render out a map (now I know why some game companies keep computers with 16G of ram), the game map now is around 23X12km. It'll probably take another week of work before it can be considered detailed enough for the game.

Here's a new NPC from this week:

[Franklin's Ghost]

Liking the new character design.

[zede05]

Been working on the intro the last couple of days (the below image is when the colony ship is entering the atmosphere), since we don't have the budget or time to make it into a 3D cg intro, it'll just be a moving animatic with music and voice overs for now, shrug.

In other news, we've got ourselves a really good composer! More on that later, but I'm really pleased with the development.

[zoq]

This seems very interesting! I really look forward to July

[zede05]

We've got Aakaash Rao to do the music for Planet Explorers, here's the grassland area theme.

http://www.pathea.net/images/web/PE_Grassland.mp3

[zede05]

This week, we got the multimaterial working properly, including shadows through hlsl...but due to the limitations of DX9 (Unity), we going to have to choose having normals or having procedural textures. We are gonna pick normals and try to do the procedural stuff some other way through shader.



The world map is sorta done, still needs some tweaks. I'm just waiting for an order of 16g ram to come in, since World Machine takes a lot of ram to render.

Also started on the effects for this game, I think we're going to go with the more flashy type of effects as seen in FF13 rather than the more realistic as seen in Skyrim.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Really like the look of those textures and colours.

[TacoBell_Lord]

The menu/item GUI is very pleasing & soft on the eyes. Its awesome & very pro, & not messy like a lot of games.

We need more open-world games like this with different theme directions & style/swagger. Orcs & Elves, dungeons & caves...stuff like this is boring me to death.

Def tracking, its something about its style that gets to me.

[zede05]

Thanks. Yeah, we're aiming for a sorta realistic setting and backstory with some sorta realistic science, but with less shiny metal compared to stuff like Mass Effect, that's the niche we're trying to carve. 

This week, we've made some huge strides in efficiency, I think it's realistic now for Planet Explores to have a draw distance of at least 512 meters or more and still run at great speeds. The world editor is also coming together nicely.

Another part we've been advancing are the AIs, especially the way for them to attack the player's defense structures. Due to the AIs being so different in the way they attack, the player will really need to be strategic about how he uses his resources and the placement of his weapons...if we can hopefully pull off this aspect, it'll be a good game.

This is an example of some creature with the ability to climb the walls.





On the art side, more creatures are being modeled, and more outfits for characters, also started on the forest trees.

[zede05]

Finally got the world map done, sweet justice!  Now we can finally start parking all the assets somewhere in the game world. Speaking of assets, here's a concept of the forest area, we're about 1/3 way through making the models for that area.

[peous]

Nice artwork ! Very Avatar-like (that is a good thing) !
Di you have "glowing" things everywhere also ?

[zede05]

Nice artwork ! Very Avatar-like (that is a good thing) !
Di you have "glowing" things everywhere also ?

Thanks! Avatar is a great inspiration for us, since they pulled off another evolutionary path flawlessly. But we're not going to have too many glowing plants...above ground anyway. We can't really afford too many environment light sources especially since we have to leave enough rendering room for when the player places his own lights in the scene.

[eigenbom]

nice concept art, tho how can you get any work done when there are chicks running around in undies?

[peous]

But we're not going to have too many glowing plants...above ground anyway. We can't really afford too many environment light sources especially since we have to leave enough rendering room for when the player places his own lights in the scene.

Ok, looks nice without glows anyway !
FYI usually glow is rendered as a post-effect pass, and so does not costs as much as lights (but I don't know if it exists in Unity).